Science Policy Around the Web – October 12, 2011

The first of our weekly linkposts, bringing you interesting and informative links on science policy issues from the internet and beyond!

Researchers reconstruct genome of the Black Death
Published in Nature, along with a hefty round of ethics committee meetings, no doubt. The authors found some interesting evolutionary tidbits: “The genomic data show that this bacterial strain, or variant, is the ancestor of all modern plagues we have today worldwide. Every outbreak across the globe today stems from a descendant of the medieval plague,” [says Johannes Krause, one of the lead authors.]

Standing desks in classrooms help kids burn calories (via Obesity Panacea on PLoS Blogs)
Swapping standing desks/stools for the usual classroom desk/chair combo correlated with increased standing, increased calorie burn, and positive effects on classroom behavior and performance. Original journal article was published in the American Journal of Public Health here (login required).